Coronavirus: WHO chief calls for moratorium on vaccine booster shots

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the delay until at least the end of September would enable poorer nations to catch up on vaccinations

Several countries have started or will start providing booster shots to fully vaccinated people to better protect them against the Delta variant

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A health care worker administers a dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine in the US, which bought an additional 200 million doses. Photo: Bloomberg

Published: 11:21pm, 4 Aug 2021Updated: 1:07am, 5 Aug 2021

The World Health Organization is calling for a moratorium on Covid-19 vaccine boosters until at least the end of September, its head, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said on Wednesday. The move was to enable at least 10 per cent of the population of every country to be vaccinated, Tedros said.

The call to stop Covid-19 vaccine boosters is the strongest yet from the UN agency as the gap between inoculation rates in wealthy and poor countries widens.

“I understand the concern of all governments to protect their people from the Delta variant. But we cannot accept countries that have already used most of the global supply of vaccines using even more of it,” Tedros added.

High-income countries administered around 50 doses for every 100 people in May, and that number had since doubled, according to the WHO. Low-income countries have only been able to administer 1.5 doses for every 100 people, due to lack of supply.

“We need an urgent reversal, from the majority of vaccines going to high-income countries, to the majority going to low-income countries,” said Tedros.